The collection consists of correspondence, minutes from meetings (primarily regional steering committee meetings) some financial
records, and sparse news clippings. It also includes documents about various BANGLE projects including youth advocacy, a lesbian
and gay parenting forum, Project Empowerment (a weekend workshop designed to empower lesbian, gay and bisexual educators)
and the S.F. BANGLE scholarship (for 1994 only). Finally, materials from the Gay and Lesbian United Educators of the United
Educators of San Francisco (the local teacher's union) are also included, a group with strong ties to BANGLE and strongly
overlapping membership.

Background

The Bay Area Network of Gay and Lesbian Educators was an organization created to support gay, lesbian and bisexual educators
and gay, lesbian and bisexual youth and their families in Bay Area schools. It was co-founded in San Francisco by Rob Birle,
a student teacher in Antioch, CA, and another person, in 1984. The goals of the group ranged from trying to be a social support
network for gay, lesbian and bisexual teachers to advocating for political change. Initially the group met only in San Francisco,
but by the mid to late 1980s chapters began to develop in the South Bay, Contra Costa County and the East Bay. A small chapter
struggled in Sonoma for a few years and then folded. To facilitate coordination and communications between chapters, a regional
steering committee was created sometime in 1987, with representatives from each chapter. A newsletter was published, beginning
in the mid 1980s, which initially included news just from San Francisco, and expanded to include regional news as the chapters
grew. Eventually each chapter took on the work of producing their own newsletter.

Restrictions

Copyright to unpublished manuscript materials has been transferred to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.